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I Hate Poetry, and You!

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Preobrazhenskoe View Drop Down
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  Quote Preobrazhenskoe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: I Hate Poetry, and You!
    Posted: 16-Nov-2006 at 21:16
Good points Siege Tower...

Eric
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  Quote Siege Tower Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Dec-2006 at 16:15
thank you Eric, may i ask you for the source of those translations.
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  Quote Brian J Checco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Feb-2007 at 23:51
No one mentioned Yeats? No one? Well, allow me to. It's written in goode olde English, here goes.  An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

                 I know that I shall meet my fate
                 Somewhere among the clouds above;
                 Those that I fight I do not hate,
                 Those that I guard I do not love;
                 My country is Killartan Cross,
                 My countrymen Killartan's poor,
                 No likely end could bring them loss
                 Or leave them happier than before.
                 Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
                 Nor public men, nor cheering clouds,
                 A lonely impulse of delight
                 Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
                 I balanced all, brought all to mind,
                 The years to come seemed waste of breath,
                 A waste of breath the years behind
                 In balance with this life, this death.

Beautiful.
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  Quote ulrich von hutten Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Feb-2007 at 10:48

NO I don't

may i  quote komnenos and myself aswell....

 
 
One of my favourite poems, by the great German playwright, poet and novelist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).
Dont know if it qualifies as a war poem, but it mentions war quite often, so:


Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters
Wer baute das siebentorige Theben?
In den Bchern stehen die Namen von Knigen.
Haben die Knige die Felsbrocken herbeigeschleppt?
Und das mehrmals zerstrte Babylon,
Wer baute es so viele Male auf? In welche Husern
Des goldstrahlenden Lima wohnten die Bauleute?
Wohin gingen an dem Abend, wo die chinesische Mauer fertig war
Die Maurer?
Das grosse Rom
Ist voll von Triumphbgen? Wer erreichte sie? ber wen
Triumphierten die Csaren? Hatte das vielbesungene Byzanz
Nur Palste fr seinen Bewohner?
Selbst in dem sagenhaften Atlantis
Brllten in der Nacht, wo das Meer es verschlang
Die Ersaufenden nach ihren Sklaven.
Der junge Alexander eroberte Indien.
Er allein?
Csar schlug die Gallier.
Hatte er nicht wenigstens einen Koch bei sich?
Philipp von Spanien weinte, als seine Flotte
Untergegangen war. Weinte sonst niemand?
Friedrich der Zweite siegte im Siebenjhrigen Krieg. Wer
Siegte ausser ihm?
Jede Seite ein Sieg.
Wer kochte den Siegesschmaus?
Alle zehn Jahre ein grosser Mann.
Wer bezahlte die Spesen?
So viele Berichte,
So viele Fragen.


Questions of a Reading Worker

Who built Thebes with her seven gates,
In books you will find the names of kings,
Did the kings tow the stones ?
And Babylon, destroyed so often,
Who re-built it so many times?
In which of the houses of golden Lima
Did the builders live?
Where did the workers go,
on the night they finished the Chinese wall?
Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arcs.
Who erected them?
Whom did the triumphant Caesars conquer?
Did famous Byzantium
Only have palaces for her people?
Even in legendary Atlantis, in the night when the sea swallowed it,
The drowning cried for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
On his own?
Caesar conquered the Gauls.
Didnt he at least have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain cried when his fleet sunk.
Was he the only one?
Frederik the second was victorious in the Seven Years War.
He alone?
A victory on each side.
Who cooks the victory meal?
A great man, every ten years.
Who payed the costs?

So many stories.
So many questions.
 
 
 
history  - that is the history of those who gave the order to write it down. history- that's the history of the winners who treaded down the slaves. no one wrote down the names of the slaves ,like no one is writing today the story of the life of the disanfrenchised. no ,it's time to take the guns to free from the spell of the oppressors. the last milleniums were only a short breath of the eternity. when will the mankind take the final breath ?
 

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  Quote Brian J Checco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Feb-2007 at 00:26
Only Great Men write history (or have it commissioned)... what the hell should we then do? Write down the histories of each individual man, woman, and child? And if we do, will history become irrelevant? The story of the people may be the story of the people, but only great humans actually make real history. 
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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Feb-2007 at 05:32
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
   Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
   And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
   And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
   By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
   Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
   When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 
	Coral is far more red than her lips' red; 
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; 
	If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. 
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, 
	But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight 
	Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. 
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
	That music hath a far more pleasing sound; 
I grant I never saw a goddess go; 
	My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. 
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare 
	As any she belied with false compare
I normally dislike love poetry, but I must admit really like the Bards Sonnets... 
I'm a sucker for Elisabethan poetry anyway...


Edited by Aelfgifu - 20-Feb-2007 at 05:35

Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.
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  Quote Brian J Checco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Feb-2007 at 00:56
Didn't Brecht write Baal? By the way, Aelfgifu: good call. Shakespeare is the very definition of beauty put to verse. His plays are also the paramount of the English language. We have been in decline ever since that Great Man. 
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  Quote Dolphin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Feb-2007 at 08:00
And there's talk of simplifying the english language again..Disasterous.
 
John Donne was an absolutely fantastic poet, and his sleaze and guile and logic and lust in the poem 'The flea' made my english classes in school a lot more interesting and stimulating.
 
    Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
    How little that which thou deny'st me is;
    Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
    And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
    Confesse it, this cannot be said
    A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,
      Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
      And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
      And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.


    Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
    When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
    This flea is you and I, and this
    Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
    Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
    And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.
      Though use make thee apt to kill me,
      Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
      And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.


    Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
    Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
    In what could this flea guilty bee,
    Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
    Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
    Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;
      'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
      Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
      Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.
                Magic

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                Quote Dolphin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Feb-2007 at 08:03

              Love and Death
              Alfred Tennyson


              What time the mighty moon was gathering light
              Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
              And all about him rolld his lustrous eyes;
              When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
              Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
              And talking to himself, first met his sight.
              You must begone, said Death, these walks are mine.
              Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;
              Yet ere he parted said, This hour is thine:
              Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree
              Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
              So in the light of great eternity
              Life eminent creates the shade of death.
              The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
              But I shall reign for ever over all.

               

              My favourite poem ever, without a doubt.
               
               
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              Brian J Checco View Drop Down
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                Quote Brian J Checco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Feb-2007 at 21:11
              Dolphin, you have grown exponentially in my eyes in terms of respect. Sadly, we live in a time where they revile poets. Which is a shame, since poetry is probably the most expressive form of communication available to manking. Is it any wonder poets in former times were so revered? There was a time, aye, not so long ago, when all a man had to do was learn the old songs and verses, and he could wander the whole country, and people would feed him as best they could, and clothe him, and all the town would sit about a fire and listen to their cultural history, the stories, the defeats, the triumphs, the warriors and mystics. Now they have iPods. Disgusting.

              All that said, Milton's Paradise Lost may be the best poem ever written.

              But I'll instead post one of my favorites. William Blake, The Tyger

                                      Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
                                      In the forests of the night,
                                      What immortal hand or eye
                                      Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

                                      In what distant deeps or skies
                                      Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
                                      On what wings der he aspire?
                                      What the hand dare seize the fire?

                                      And what shoulder, & what art,
                                      Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
                                      And when thy heart began to beat,
                                      What dread hand? & what dread feet?

                                      What the hammer? what the chain?
                                      In what furnace was thy brain?
                                      What the anvil? and what dread grasp
                                      Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

                                      When the stars threw down their spears
                                      And water'd heaven with their tears,
                                      Did he smile his work to see?
                                      Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

                                      Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
                                      In the forests of the night,
                                      What immortal hand or eye
                                      Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?






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              Aelfgifu View Drop Down
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                Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Feb-2007 at 11:22
              I like this one too:

              Thistles

               

              Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
              Thistles spike the summer air
              And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

              Every one a revengeful burst
              Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
              Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

              From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
              They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
              Every one manages a plume of blood.

              Then they grow grey like men.
              Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
              Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

              Ted Hughes


              Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.
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                Quote Dolphin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Mar-2007 at 09:35
              Aristotle said that poetry was more worthy of studying than history, which is an interesting thought.
               
               
               
               
              UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES.
              by Robert Herrick

              Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
              Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
              That liquefaction of her clothes.

              Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
              That brave vibration each way free ;
              O how that glittering taketh me !
               
               
               
              God, I love poetry


              Edited by Dolphin - 01-Mar-2007 at 09:36
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                Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Mar-2007 at 09:25
              I love poetry.Herez one poem I like.
               

              Monumental Erections

              The Egyptians built the pyramids
              The Greeks the parthenon
              Prehistoric man built monoliths
              Of which Stonehenge is one

              But modern man's only monument
              To his enduring might
              Is a glass-clad priapic phallus
              Six hundred feet in height

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